that time "Port of the Cavalier."

When the party got back to the ships, Nuno Tristam's Arab was set to
work again, with no better success, "for the language of the captives
was not Moorish but Azaneguy of Sahara," the tongue of the great desert
zone of West Africa, between the end of the northern strip of fertile
country round Fez and Morocco, and the beginning of the rich tropical
region at the Senegal, where the first real blacks were found. The
Portuguese were in despair of finding a prisoner who could "tell the
lord Infant what he wanted to know," but now the chief, "even as he
shewed that he was more noble than the other captives, so now it
appeared that he had seen more than they, and had been to other lands
where he had learnt the Moorish tongue so that he understood our Arab
and answered to whatever was asked of him."

And so to make trial of the people of the land and to have of them more
certain knowledge, they put that Arab on shore and one of the Moorish
women their captives with him, who were to speak to the natives if they
could, about the ransom of those they had taken and about exchange of
merchandise.

And at the end of two days there came down to the shore quite one
hundred and fifty Moors on foot, and thirty-five mounted on camels and
horses, and though they seemed to be a race both barbarous and bestial,
there was not wanting in them a certain sharpness, with which they
could cheat their enemies, for at first there only appeared three of
them on the beach, and the rest lay in ambush till our men should land
and they could rush out and master them, which thing they could easily
have done, so many were they, if our men had been a whit less sharp than
themselves. But when the Moors saw that our boats did not land, but
turned back again to the ship, they discovered their treachery, and all
came down in a body upon the beach, hurling stones and making gestures
of defiance, shewing us the Arab we had sent to them as a captive in
their hands.

So our men came back to the ship and made their division of the
prisoners, according to the lot of each. And Antam Gonsalvez turned back
because he had now loaded his caravel with the cargo that the Infant had
ordered him, but Nuno Tristam went on, as he for his part had in charge.
But as his vessel was in need of repair, he put to shore and careened
and refitted it as well as he could, keeping his tides as if he were
before the port of Lisbon, at which boldness